The Black Talon

by Richard A. Knaak

  Then the fire dwindled, and all around him changed. It happened so abruptly that the grand lord could not at first believe it. He lay on the ground for a moment, staring at everything, then staring at the signet once more.

  Then Golgren smiled.

  Dauroth felt the opposite emotion. He felt the sudden surge of incredible magical forces around the mongrel just before he saw the astounding results. The lead Titan glared in disbelief.

  “The power of the ancients!” he roared, eyes burning as bright as the sun. “How is it that he commands the power of the ancients?”

  Kallel let out a hacking cough then called, “Great Dauroth! E-end this now! We h-have destroyed Golgren’s army and proven that only the Titans have the might to rule the ogre race! We have proven we are the masters of destiny! If we keep this up, we will only destroy Garantha and possibly our—”

  “From the ruins we will be better able to rebuild the city and our kind! Now cease your whining!” Dauroth stared beyond the room, thinking furiously. “A signet! The half-breed must possess a signet of the High Ogres … and he even wields it!”

  “How is that possible?” asked Safrag, sweat pouring down his face. Yet of all the others besides Dauroth, he looked the most determined, the most willing to push on with the spell.

  “A moot question! Even the signet will not save him! In the end we shall salvage it from his crushed and buried body! Safrag, I must ask for more power from you and the others!”

  No one dared protest. Dauroth was pulling all of them, including himself, beyond their known limits. Under his command, the robed spellcasters concentrated their willpower, their essences, into the task. Some no longer looked so handsome, so perfect. Instead, they appeared old and emaciated, in more than one case so withered that they seemed almost like f’hanos themselves. Their expressions, so pained, were horrific to behold. Yet they told themselves that all of that would be remedied when their work was finished … if it could be finished soon.

  Only Dauroth did not care. If he had to sacrifice everyone else, he would see it through. Then not only would there be no more grand lord, but this new prize, the signet—however it had been acquired by the mongrel—would be added to his collection.

  The two human f’hanos converged on Stefan and the elf, who were having trouble standing, much less preparing to fight.

  Stefan eyed the pair regretfully. How he knew which of his comrades had become those fleshless fiends was beyond his ken, but he recognized the duo as easily as if they were alive and standing before him. Once again he condemned himself for failing to save them somehow, preventing their terrible fate.

  “Sir Stefan!” Idaria shouted. She had been shouting his name repeatedly, trying to jar him out of his seemingly dazed state. “Sir Stefan! You cannot just stand there! Please!”

  Forced to take action on her own, the elf slave picked up a large stone and tossed it at the nearest of the undead. However, the stone bounced off without doing any harm.

  Her attempt managed to stir Stefan to action. He gave a start, struggling forward and lunging at the one he knew was once Willum. If the f’hanos retained any of their memories or abilities after death, Willum would be the most dangerous.

  Indeed, the larger ghoul dodged Stefan’s awkward attack and continued to close on them. Willum carried no weapon, but one bony hand was folded into a fist and the other reached for the knight, likely with the intention of ripping out his throat.

  The Solamnic swatted away the grasping hand then swung. His blade rebounded off the figure’s bones with such force that Stefan nearly dropped his weapon. At the same time, the thing that had once been Hector tried to seize his sword arm, but Idaria grabbed the bony limb, then tried to twist it around.

  “Keep back!” Stefan cautioned, but Idaria did not heed his warning. Hector turned on the elf woman, seizing her forearm and holding it tight. She slammed her hand into his rib cage, but the f’hanos, moving swiftly, grabbed hold of her wrist.

  “No!” Stefan made a desperate lunge with his sword at the other undead man’s nearest limb. However, Willum seized his arm, keeping the sword from being a threat to either creature. “Let her go!” Stefan pleaded, for Willum was eyeing Idaria hungrily. “She has nothing to do with us! Take me as you will, but let her be, Willum!”

  The skeletal figure with Hector’s features, hearing the familiar voice of his old comrade, suddenly stilled. Willum, too, paused but then jerkily brought his fist forward.

  Stefan started to react, but halted as the skeletal Willum opened his fist. In Willum’s bony palm lay a triangular pendant. The setting was forged from steel, and the center had a pair of arching horns made from brass.

  It was a medallion of the god of just cause, Kiri-Jolith.

  As Stefan stared in bewilderment, dead Willum offered it to him again.

  Staring at the empty eye sockets, Stefan gingerly plucked the medallion from the f’hanos’s palm. A warmth began to wash over the knight.

  Hector suddenly released the elf woman. The two undead warriors stood motionless for a moment, then collapsed together in a pile of bones.

  At that point, the ground beneath them suddenly cracked and heaved worse than before.

  Secreting the medallion in his armor, Stefan seized Idaria’s hand just as the two of them started to sink into a fresh chasm. Together, they jumped up to a nearby rise.

  Idaria abruptly tugged him. “It is him! He is there!”

  “Who?” No sooner had he asked the question than the Solamnic caught sight of the Grand Lord Golgren in the distance. The ogre leader looked crazy, his hair flowing wildly around his grinning face as he sought to climb up a high jumble of massive stones.

  The elf cried Golgren’s name, but the ogre did not hear her. Golgren finally reached the top of his little mountain and stood straight. He laughed and held up his fist, shaking it at the sky and everything, as though taunting the forces assailing him.

  And those forces responded in kind, for the sky, which had turned to fire, suddenly unleashed a dozen bolts of black lightning. They shot toward the grand lord, battering and burning around where he stood, dancing on the roiling land and dodging the bolts. The black lightning bolts churned up so much earth and dust that the pair quickly lost their view of him.

  Idaria let out a gasp of fear. Stefan shook his head. “He can’t have survived that.”

  But though the lightning continued unabated, through glimpses here and there they saw the half-breed still standing and laughing defiantly. His garments were ruined, his skin was black and bruised, but he retained an air of invincibility.

  “We must reach him!” Idaria tried to move forward, but in doing so nearly fell into a ravine opening up on one side of them.

  The knight pulled her back. “We can do nothing for him and likely nothing for ourselves but pray!” He touched a hand to the medallion. “If there is a way, great Kiri-Jolith … if there is a way to guide us—even him,” Stefan added, referring to Golgren, “—through this, then I ask humbly for your aid. Or else what is lost here may lead to a dread darkness spreading beyond the ogre realms.”

  But their own position remained precarious, and the heavens assailed Golgren as the ground sought to devour him. Black lightning bolts peppered the ogre like monstrous spears.

  Then one of the deadly bolts struck.

  A rush of dirt and stone filled the air. Stefan and Idaria were blinded. The knight pressed his companion close, using his armor to shield her from the massive rush of debris that was certain to fall upon them. Stefan Rennert prayed over and over to Kiri-Jolith, in the end merely chanting the god’s name.

  Huge chunks began pelting them. They clattered against the knight’s armor, battering and denting it. Stefan clutched Idaria closer. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and raised one arm over his head to try to ward off the deadly rain.

  Several heavy rocks struck the knight on his back. Then he was smacked on the back of the head. Pain jolted Stefan, and Idaria let out a muffled exclamation.
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  Then there was nothing.

  XXIII

  DOWNFALL OF A TITAN

  The signet did not protect him completely. Golgren had brutally discovered that reality. Yet the signet had kept him from severe harm when the one bolt had struck him—no small miracle in itself. The ogre had been shocked and tossed about, and his right shoulder still felt painful and numb, but he lived.

  How much longer that would be the case was difficult to say.

  He held up the ring and wished for some sort of all-encompassing shield, but in fact there was a new barrage of bolts, none of the bolts coming as close as that first one, thankfully.

  Yet he couldn’t stand awaiting the inevitable. Again he shouted, personally addressing the leader of the Titans. “Come, Dauroth! I spit upon your efforts! Never will I kneel to you! Come!”

  The air was inundated with dust. Golgren’s pronouncement ended in an unimpressive hacking cough. His lungs felt as if they were filled with acid. He pressed his hand against his chest, shoving aside the mummified appendage that somehow still hung around his neck.

  His fingers grazed the cursed vial. Its uselessness bothered him even more than the fact it was sealed to his flesh.

  Then his harried thoughts flitted to a face, an elf face.

  The face was not that of Idaria, but of a female who, although no older than the slave, looked as though she had lived twice as long. Weathered lines that should have never graced such a delicate face had run rampant over his mother’s visage. Despite everything that she had suffered, her eyes spoke of life and energy. She had stayed alive rather than kill herself because of her child, the misfit half-breed she had been forced to bring into the world and yet had loved more than herself.

  The image in his mind lasted but a second, yet it filled him with not only a deep longing and regret, but also a rage that reminded him of what he was and what he sought to achieve.

  His hand drifted to the ancient dagger, gripping it tightly. It had been meant for another deed, but better to end his life and gain a small satisfaction that Dauroth would be annoyed.

  He brought the point up to his throat.

  A new, far more intense tremor ripped through his surroundings. The shining dagger fell from his grasp, tumbling among the rocks. Golgren let out a frantic cry, and the lord of Kern and Blöde snatched at the weapon. His mother’s face and the struggle with the ji-baraki in the old temple momentarily overwhelmed him. The dagger had become, in his eyes, a gift from his mother’s spirit, always to remind Golgren of her and of how she had helped him to survive after her own death.

  To lose it recalled to him how he had lost her.

  As the tremor increased in magnitude, Golgren pushed back the memories and tried to focus. He found no hope, though. Destruction lay everywhere. The ogre glanced around at what would soon become his grave, aware there would not be enough scraps for anyone to bury or burn should his former subjects decide it was even worth their trouble. More likely, whoever found him would strip whatever of value remained then spit upon his ruined body. That was the fate for a failed leader.

  Then, as he looked off to one side, Golgren beheld two tiny figures. One was the Solamnic knight, Sir Stefan Rennert, who appeared either unconscious or, more likely, dead. The armored fighter lay sprawled on his back across a small outcropping.

  Idaria stood over the man, her left hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him up to safety with her other arm. Yet the elf’s gaze was not on her companion, but fixed on Golgren.

  The grand lord tore his eyes from her. It was bad enough he had to die, but to have the elf slave as his final witness …

  The chain that held his withered hand seemed to be suffocating him. Swearing, Golgren nearly tore off the lost appendage as he loosened the chain. Again his fingers touched the vial that Dauroth had insisted was of no danger to him. In his desperation, the grand lord wondered: Was there a chance?

  Had the Titan lied?

  A bolt rocketed down. It tore up the soil just ahead of him. A new torrent of rock and dirt assailed Golgren as he fell back.

  He slammed his fist against the vial.

  It did not break. Worse, the heavens exploded, and the ground churned as if it had turned liquid. Golgren had only a moment to note that it all took place in his immediate vicinity and nowhere else. Dauroth wanted him and only him, and it looked as if he might be successful.

  Golgren was lost.

  And yet some mysterious force still protected him, or else the first moment of the new upheaval would have seen him crushed under tons of stone. However, that protection was weak, and was weakening further. It would not last long.

  Again his harried thoughts returned to the vial. Golgren could not explain why, but he felt certain that it was his best hope. Unfortunately, he could not seem to pry it loose.

  Wrapping his maimed arm around a jutting piece of rock, the grand lord rubbed the side of his scarred and bleeding face with his hand, trying to think even as he fought to keep his balance with the ground shifting beneath him. Another bolt struck, barely missing him. He felt a sharp pain across his face. Adding insult to injury, he had added to his multitude of wounds by somehow cutting himself. As the blood trickled down his face, Golgren saw why. The edge of the signet had scraped against his skin. Some blood even splashed across the signet.

  And suddenly the symbols flared a fiery orange again.

  That orange glow was reflected in his widening eyes. Teeth bared in a fatalistic grin, Golgren twisted his hand around so the ring faced inward, toward himself and the vial.

  “Perhaps we go together yet, eh, Dauroth?” the grand lord hissed. “That would not be so bad an end, then, for me.”

  It was a final, crazy notion, yet just as when Golgren had figured out how to wield Tyranos’s staff against the skeletal meredrake, it seemed the right—the only—thing to do.

  As hard as he could, Golgren smashed the bloody signet into the vial. He heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and suddenly he felt as though all the air had been ripped from his lungs. Golgren cursed his naïveté, cursed having failed so utterly.

  The ground rushed up at him from all sides. The sky vanished under a hail of earth.

  Dauroth gasped.

  He had lost control of the spell; the quake had lessened, and the lightning ceased altogether. The other Titans darted glances his way, but he ignored them, allowing only Safrag, through his deeper connection, to understand even the least bit of what was happening. The apprentice wisely kept silent.

  But the pain did not pass as he might have wished. Rather, it grew and swelled. The immense effort had finally begun to take its toll on him. He had to finish it. Then, while the others awaited him there, he would go to his sanctum and be the first to imbibe again from the dwindling supply of elixir.

  Yes, that was what was left to do; in spite of the pain, he had to finish Golgren. The rest would fall into place.

  Fighting to concentrate, Dauroth located Golgren. A final thrust of magical power, and the grand lord would be no more than a blot of red on the ruined landscape.

  Just a final thrust—

  His entire body suddenly flinched, feeling as if on fire. Dauroth could not hold back a roar of agony. The pain was everywhere; it was inside him and surrounding him. Only his incredible willpower kept everything from falling apart.

  Kallel made things worse by interrupting his struggling thoughts. “Great Dauroth! You must stop! This is taking from you too much—”

  “Taking from you. Is that not what you mean?” countered Safrag emphatically. “The master is not so weak of will as you! His strength of mind is more powerful than anything!”

  Safrag’s declaration pushed Dauroth to try and overcome his agony. It must pass. Surely it would pass.

  Dauroth screamed as his body was wracked with worse pain. He felt as though he were being torn apart. He felt … only pain.

  And in that moment, clarity came to him. He understood the cause of his struggles. The vial was not powerful enou
gh to hurt him! The minotaur priestess’s spell work was inadequate! Dauroth had tested the vial several times and proved that he was immune. Her enchantment had been too weak. At the most, it should have caused him a mere twinge, not the abject horror he was experiencing.

  Yet … what other explanation was there?

  The signet! The ancient signet that somehow had found its way to Golgren. The mongrel must have learned how to use the signet to amplify the enchantment on the vial, actually make the Uruv Suurt priestess’s spell function as originally intended.

  But Golgren was no master of High Ogre artifacts and magic. It would take a true scholar of the arts, such as a Titan, to make it function properly.

  And not just any Titan … such knowledge, such casting of spells, required a member who belonged to Dauroth’s inner circle.

  The Black Talon.

  And with that realization, he turned his torturous gaze upon those standing with him, his eyes focusing first and foremost upon Kallel. Kallel, who had protested ever Dauroth’s demand upon the rest for power, who constantly worried about whether there was enough elixir or whether the other sources they had gathered would ever be enough to replace the blood of elves. Kallel … Kallel … the name played over and over in his head, in condemning fashion. Dauroth’s skull pounded.

  “Betrayer!” he shouted at last, the shocking denunciation fortified by the torture Dauroth was undergoing. “Betrayer!”

  Taken aback, the rest of the Black Talon broke from the pattern, not caring that in doing so they shattered the spell. Kallel, gaping, sought to hide among his comrades. However, they shoved him away, leaving him to face the master alone.

  Something had begun to gnaw at Dauroth, a terrible gnawing that grew with each labored breath. “Betrayer!” he managed to gasp again. One hand twisted into a fist. He felt Safrag strengthen him for what he was about to do. “Kallel, you are condemned!”

  “Nay, great one! I know not even what you speak of! I did nothing!” Kallel’s eyes were bright with fear. “Nay! Do not—”